From the Inside: Chopper 1 (21 page)

Ebert was sentenced to eight years but was out in three. Within days of being released he was back to his trade and was soon making $1000 running three parlours.

On April 17, 1980, he was shot dead outside one of his parlours in Rathdowne Street, Carlton. His murder has never been solved.

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IN 1974, I bashed and nearly kicked to death a young, up and coming standover man, gunman and so called heavy as he walked out of the Retreat Hotel in Collingwood, Mick Ebert.

Yet somehow this pussy maintained a heavy and feared reputation within the Melbourne underworld until his death.

He was, to my way of thinking, only a two-bob pimp and he had never fought or beaten anyone of any real importance within the Melbourne criminal world. How this arse wipe ever got his reputation is beyond my power of understanding. When he came to jail in the mid 1970s he acted as bodyguard to my old enemy, Keith Faure until he realised that Faure expected him to fight against me and then Ebert and Faure fell out and Ebert vanished into the mainstream of the prison system, leaving poor Keithy to wage war alone.

I must say that I ended up respecting Keithy Faure as during the five or so years of gang wars between us he took a terrible beating and defeat after defeat, yet he did have blind guts. He lacked tactics and strategies, and was betrayed and left like a shag on a rock by many of his so-called close personal friends, yet he never surrendered. I respected his blind courage.

Danny McIntosh

Danny Francis McIntosh was a major armed robber and an accomplished truck hijacker. He was involved in breaking and entering. He had a reputation as a man who could always get a hand on a gun. McIntosh was well respected by criminals as a professional armed robber who always did his homework before a big job. But while crime was his job, according to Read, buxom, famous women were his obsession.

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THERE was a real good little bank robber called Danny McIntosh who later died of leukaemia. I used to bump into him in pubs and clubs as well as in jail in the 1970s and 80s. As well as his involvement in massive criminal concerns he had a funny side.

He was always falling in love with television stars and making outrageous fairytale plans to kidnap them. He started with Princess Panda in the 1960s, so I’m told, and then he got excited over Cheryl Rixon in the 1970s, then Abigail. But his greatest moment was his plot to kidnap Lynda Stoner in 1977. Meetings were called and plots hatched for real. He even approached me as none of his bank robbery mates would have a bar of it.

Danny cornered me in the South Yarra Arms in 1977. He told me he had a private detective, Tom Ericksen, follow Lynda so he knew her address in Melbourne and where her relatives lived in South Australia. He had photos taken of her and even knew where she did her shopping. He was really quite nutty over her.

He certainly did his homework on her. There is no doubt he wanted to have her abducted. He wanted me to do the actual kidnapping because he didn’t want Lynda to be frightened of him. His plan was that he wanted to ‘save’ her. He was to come to the hideout and in front of her he was going to talk me out of it and then take her to safety. I was supposed to wear a balaclava.

He told me he wanted me to abduct her at gunpoint and not to be too gentle about it. I was to take her to a secret location for about two days.

Danny imagined that would be long enough to break her will.

All this was to be done in an attempt to impress Ms Stoner who would then fall head over heels for Danny.

Danny was a sex maniac. He was very cool when it came to robbing banks, but on anything else he was loopy. He always gave me the impression that he was under the influence of some mind-altering drugs.

I have no doubt that he wanted to go ahead with the plan. I have no idea what would have happened to the girl if she had resisted his advances.

Suffice to say it would probably not be wise to get involved with a drug-crazed armed robber who thought he loved you.

He was not a big man, in fact he was a bit of a weed. But he carried a gun and was crazy.

Anything could have happened if the plan went ahead.

Lynda Stoner was not well-known then. I think she had just started to appear on television and her picture had been in a few magazines, but it was enough that Danny got a crush on her.

I said, ‘Danny, we’ll all get 100 years jail for this, for Christ's sake. Send the bloody woman some flowers instead.’ I believe that in the end he did send her some flowers ‘from a secret admirer’.

Yes, Danny was a very weird little man, in regard to his personal thinking. He was one of a group of crims who used the drug LSD in the 60s.

They were all the same. They had that sort of spaced out thinking process. You know, there was a little bit of Charles Manson about him.

Danny was a little runt of a bloke but he was deadly serious about his plans with Ms Stoner. Meetings were held and plans were made. He was quite crackers about her.

I don’t think anyone had the heart to tell him that Ms Stoner would probably have been able to beat him in a fist fight. If she had got her arms free after she was tied up, I think Danny would have been in trouble.

Danny was always good to me. A grand in my hand whenever I saw him. He was no fool.

Lenny Knape

Leonard Allan Knape was an armed robber who learnt firsthand that crime doesn’t always pay. On February 3, 1978, Knape, with partner, Stanley Robert Walters robbed the Reservoir Target Supermarket of $12,000. In the car park they were confronted by an off duty armed robbery squad detective, Brendan Bannan. Shots were exchanged and Knape ended up with a bullet in the chest and Walters, one in the stomach. Knape was later sentenced to 14 years jail.

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LENNY Knape was a top bank robber and gunman and one of the best stand up street fighters in Pentridge. He gave it to Bill O’Meally in H Division in the 1960s. That was back in the days when O’Meally ran H Division.

Lenny was only a young chap then. I first met Lenny in Bendigo Prison back in 1986; he was very kind to me and one of the true gentlemen I have met in my life.

He was shot in the shoulder during an armed robbery by a well-known and now high-ranking policeman, Brendan Bannan.

Later, Lenny got married, got out of jail in 1986 shortly before I did and I believe he got involved in the church. He was involved in social welfare work, helping released prisoners in some sort of half-way house set up. He hasn’t been back to jail and I can only wish him all the very best. Before he left jail I said, ‘Come in with me Lenny, and we’ll get into the toecutting business’.

He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and said; ‘Ten years ago, Chopper, when I was younger and madder, maybe. But I want to get out and live, not get out and die’.

All I can say is, we would have had a top time together. But, then again, maybe I should have listened to him.

Joey Hamilton

Joey Hamilton was a man who liked to talk. He talked to the Beach Inquiry into the Police. He talked to politicians. He talked to reporters and he talked to other criminals. He was charged and convicted over an armed robbery in 1973, but the conviction was later quashed. He received $26,000 in compensation for his time in prison.

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JOEY Hamilton, or Mangles as he was called, was one of the most boring individuals I’d ever come across in jail. If I hadn’t already cut my ears off, I’m sure he would have tried to talk them off. I knew him in B Division in 1975. Jimmy Loughnan and I had an escape plan, for me it was my one and only escape attempt, but for Jimmy it was plan 300.

Don’t ask me how, but Joey Hamilton got his head in on the action. All I ever wanted to do with his head is push it down a toilet bowl. I found him to be a chatter box.

But another bloke thought well of him, and so did Jimmy, so he was in. Well, on the big day I was there with 60 feet of rope and a tomahawk, Jimmy had some rope and a big knife and the other bloke arrived to say that Joey wasn’t coming because there was a good show on TV. He had just got a new television set in his cell. I started towards his cell but ended up laughing about it rather than killing him. I have never forgotten Hamilton, a true man of steel.

Some time later, Jimmy decided he didn’t like Joey. He got it into his head that we should have a game of cricket in the B Division yard and use Hamilton’s head as the cricket ball. He wanted us to cut his head off for the game.

I must say that Jimmy could flip right out now and again and he was a very dangerous man. Joey was as nice as pie to both of us, he always was well-mannered and eager to chat. He just gave me the shits.

Well, Jimmy found out that Ray Chuck, who was Jimmy’s hero, didn’t like Joey, and that was enough to start Loughnan stewing and brooding.

Jimmy Loughnan was a good mate of Jockey Smith. Jimmy loved robbing banks. He was a useless bank robber, a total failure, but he was a massive trier. When Ray Chuck said he didn’t like Hamilton, that was it for Jimmy.

The cricket game with Hamilton’s head as the cricket ball was more than just a fantasy; Jim was quite serious. I was happy with the idea of wasting Hamilton, any excuse was better than none, but Jimmy’s idea of the cricket game meant a certain life sentence.

Killing Hamilton wasn’t the issue, doing a life sentence for it was. Luckily, for all of us, especially Hamilton, I managed to talk Jimmy out of the idea. Jimmy was as mad as a hatter, poor bugger.

Scottish Steve

THE Speed King of Melbourne’s western suburbs is a man known as ‘Scottish Steve’, and he is the greatest threat to the Lygon Street Crew. He once thought I was part of a plot to kill him, but that was not true.

Scottish Steve is a man of average height and weight, but fit and strong. With his black hair and moustache he looks more like a Sicilian than a Scot. He is a martial arts expert, a master with samurai swords, a marksman and a gun collector.

He carries a 9 mm handgun or a .38 automatic at all times, reputedly sleeping with one under the pillow. He also has a semi-automatic rifle beside his bed.

Steve either controls or stands over most of the speed in the western suburbs.

He is protected by various electronic alarm systems, booby traps and two German Shepherd guard dogs. He is an art collector, and many believe he has in his possession a painting by Goya, stolen of course.

Scottish Steve uses speed himself and the massive paranoia from that habit mixed with a mild mental condition and his morbid and unhealthy interest in the mystic arts and black magic, makes him one of the strangest men I have ever met.

He once told a group of us that when it rained he didn’t get wet. He was convinced that he had special mystical powers. He used to sit in his backyard in full martial arts uniform, on a Japanese white rug with his samurai swords and assorted weapons around him. He would have the incense burning and he would drink a mixture of his and his German Shepherd’s blood while putting curses of death on his assorted enemies.

The man is a dangerous nut. I once acted as a bodyguard for him over a short period of time while he was having bother with the Lygon Street crew. He paid big dollars but he was crippled with a paranoid mental condition which had him running around inside his house with a rifle, convinced that two well-known Melbourne detectives were in the house across the road, and the father of one of the detectives was mowing the lawn.

Steve was a mental case. He would test fire his guns in the backyard and when he got arrested he couldn’t work out how the police got on to him — never thinking for a moment that it could have been his fault.

I once caught Steve naked in his backyard cleaning his two German Shepherds with a vacuum cleaner. He claimed the vacuum cleaner picked up all the fleas.

Steve is out and about now and he has been for some time and, I am reliably informed, as nutty as ever. He is still convinced that with his mystical powers and Satan’s help he and his small army of speed-ravaged nut cases will fight the good fight against the forces of darkness. I like Steve and will not put his last name in this. Any enemy of the Carlton Crew is a mate of mine, regardless of insanity. There are some weird and wonderful chaps running around out there but Scottish Steve is one of the weirdest, believe me.

Steve sees Lygon Street and the Fairy Godfather as, to quote Steve himself, ‘the head of the snake which must be destroyed’.

As a matter of interest, Steve used to put two teaspoons of speed into his dogs’ water dish. No wonder they were the craziest German Shepherds in Melbourne.

Nick Apostolidis

Nick Apostolidis was a drug dealer who wishes he had never heard the name Chopper Read.

The former car salesman, butcher and fork-lift driver who has prior convictions for rape, obscene exposure, drug trafficking, robbery and carrying a firearm learnt firsthand from Read what it was like to be the hunted rather than the hunter.

He didn’t like it.

Read shot Apostolidis’s friend Chris Liapis in the stomach then told the injured man, ‘justice comes out of the end of a barrel.’ Read later burnt Apostolidis’s house down. He also fired shots in Apostolidis’s mother’s home in 1987 during a campaign of terror.

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NOW Nick 'The Greek' is not what you would call a heavy criminal. He is, in fact, a nitwit.

He was a western suburbs drug dealer. Sure, I burnt his house down, so what? As I said to him later when I was asked why I burnt it down: ‘I love a sunburnt country.’

Who would make a fuss about burning his house down. I know I got two years jail for that and shooting the drug dealer. So what? Burning Nick the Greek’s house down, big deal, who cares? Don’t mention to me about old Nick the Greek, with his $60,000 a month out of heroin and wanting to whinge to me about the burning down of his house. He’s only screaming because he lost his dope in the house.

You may think I was a little cruel firing shots at his mother’s house but the truth is I think that Nick should thank me for what I have done for him. Being my enemy has launched some formerly unknown criminals into the criminal world’s version of superstars. It’s quite amusing.